A
“Gotham wind” blew in the sense that a cold front had produced gusts sufficient
for the AWOS (automated weather observation system) at the Gotham airport to
announce wind from the northeast at seven knots, gusting to thirteen, well
within Wayne One’s maximum cross-wind component. Captain Leffinger had
obviously compensated with quick acceleration on the runway and an early lift
off to minimize the risk of stalling…

Selina stifled a reluctant chuckle and Bruce paused his
faux-narration in the style of an improbably well-informed Matches making a
supplemental log entry to close Batman’s casefile.

“Lift is generated by the creation of a pressure
differential over the wing surfaces,” he continued with Malone’s rough
inflection. “The lowest pressure occurs over the upper surface and the highest
pressure under the wing…” He paused again as the suppressed laugh escaped her.
Then she bit her lip, assuming a mask of determined control, and he continued.
“All tactical and strategic weather summaries project minimal turbulence once
we’ve achieved cruising altitude,” he stated, and this time she just waved him
silent with a combination Jazz Hands/Personal Foul/I Surrender gesture.

“You did ask,” he reminded her.

“I guess that will teach me to make jokes about the sacred
log,” she said with the unrepentant look that answered all his reminders.

“Good,” he grunted.

A comfortable silence fell, which gradually became less
comfortable.

“Do you want a drink?” Bruce asked abruptly.

“You don’t drink when you fly,” Selina reminded him.

“It will take two weeks for the alcohol inhibitors to
dissipate completely,” he said with a lip-twitch. “Why not take advantage.
Perpetuate the image a little longer.”

“The image of Fop Wayne emptying a magnum every flight?”
Selina frowned. “I don’t think so, but I will join you on the real reason
you’re in the mood for a belt.”

“And what’s that?” he asked, dipping into the gravel.

“Champagne or something stronger?” she dodged.

“Oh, champagne,” he answered, seemingly as the playboy but
managing to convey an annoyed irony.

“Right, because we’re celebrating,” Selina murmured as she
went to the galley.

While she was gone, Bruce switched on the entertainment
center and linked the Internet feeds from his laptop to display on all four
screens of the two-by-two grid at the front of the cabin. He skimmed the latest
reports and scowled. The Gotham arrests were generating the expected leads and
Westie associates in Metropolis, Philadelphia and Boston were already
scrambling. They would be taking more damage over the coming months thanks to
severed supply lines, lost contacts and distributors.

“Sláinte,” Selina said, handing him a glass.

He took it and stared down at the pinhead-size bubbles
rising in neat columns. Selina noted the similarity to Batman watching thugs in
an alley, and she laid a soft finger on the top of the laptop.

“Any news?” she asked.

“There’s no way he’ll live through the night.”

“It’s okay to admit you feel bad,” Selina said gently. “He
was so… not Carmine.”

“I told you the night you encountered Nigma at the Adamas
Exchange, a crimefighter cannot draw those distinctions. There can’t be a line
between the monsters it’s a pleasure to take down and those that he…”

“Doesn’t hate?” Selina prompted. “See this is what I don’t
get, because it’s the only area where you seem to think it’s fine and even
laudable to deny reality. I say ‘the last person to legitimately own the thing
died in 30 B.C.,’ and you scowl and snarl and grind your knuckles into your
glove. I make a joke about ‘practical socialism’ and you’re ready to hit me.
Still illegal, other people’s property, grumble-growl-grunt. But you’re allowed
to sit there and pretend that… Look, the line exists, Bruce. Whether you
acknowledge it or not, it exists. There’s a division. In your mind. If it had
been Falcone who had a probably-fatal heart attack when they came for him,
neither of us would give a damn. But it wasn’t. It was Finn, and we both feel
awful.”

“No.”

“In all likelihood, he’ll be dead by the time we touchdown
in Rio. Bruce, don’t tell me you don’t feel that. I know better. I know when
your mouth says one thing and what’s going on between your ears is something
else entirely. Look at me: if he pulls through and his ticker somehow holds out
through a trial, they’re going to sentence him to at least thirty years more
than he’s got. I don’t think it’s a monstrous sin to admit you’re not
thrilled.”

“Your opinion of my opinion of right and wrong,” Bruce
muttered, taking a drink. “I thought we finished that argument years ago.”

They sat in silence until each drained their glasses, then
Selina refilled them.

“To the Fate of Maewyn Finn,” she proposed. “I can make
you feel better, or worse. Preference?”

Bruce’s eyes narrowed.

“If you have additional information, I expect to hear it
before I close the log,” he snapped. “No ‘better or worse.’ All of it.”

“God, Bruce, Psychobat’s not only a bad loser, he’s a bad
winner. You won, jackass. You wanted to end the Westies, it’s done. They’re
done. There’s nothing I know and you don’t that has any bearing on that. It’s
just… I did have some time alone in the dining room with Mrs. Finn, and… there’s
something that might make you feel better and something that really, really
won’t.”

He thought about it, sipped, and then said “Selina, I’m a
detective. I want to know, period. I want all the information available,
regardless of how it makes me ‘feel.’”

“Okay, well, you know how we kept hearing that Finn had
four sons?” she began, and Bruce nodded curtly.

“I know, and they’re all dead. One shanked in Blackgate.
One in a hit by the Georgian half of the Russian mob, one in his war with the
Columbian cartels. One was an unsolved shooting. That’s why he never retired
to anywhere warmer or more inviting than Staten Island. They didn’t want to
move away from the cemetery.”

“Ah, well that’s not what I found out. She had
four. He had a fifth. Don’t ask how it came up, but there was a mistress or
something in the late 80s. Anyway, he had a fifth child, also a boy... killed
in Afghanistan.”

“Well, that is tragic,” Bruce admitted. “And those losses
undoubtedly contributed to his becoming the kind of man he was. But for the
record, Selina, he killed other people’s sons, and had them killed.”

“Yes, and that’s what brings me to the ‘feel better’
factoid. You remember that bowl I admired on the dining room table? White and
blue, with the big orange flowers and all that gold.”

“I remember it was Chinese Imari,” Bruce said with a
reluctant smile. “Ironic given Finn’s paranoia about all things Asian. They
obviously didn’t know. It’s just, as Gina put it, ‘a pretty bowl.’”

“Yeah, you don’t really think I’d be saying ‘antique
porcelain irony’ was going to make you feel better, do you? I noticed the bowl
because it’s really unusual to find one that big. And it’s unusual to find that
particular orangish-red, and it’s unusual for them to have green in
addition to the standard red and gold over the blue and white. So, three
unusual things overlapping that way, kitty’s whiskers start twitching. Your
detective gets off one way, mine does this.”

She squeezed into the seat beside him and started banging
away on his keyboard until a picture of the bowl appeared on the viewscreen,
expanded to fill all four quadrants.

“It’s early 18th Century Kangxi, probably 1710. Two small
‘character marks’ aka chips to the rim, no cracks or restoration…” She hit a
final key, and the picture shrunk down to a quarter of the page in an insurance
report that filled the left two screens while the right displayed the police
report.

“Disappeared from the Madison Avenue home of Mr. and Mrs.
Jules Evewad, June 1986, the night Mrs. Evewad was… murdered by an intruder,”
Bruce murmured as he skimmed. “Dog was poisoned, security guard and caretaker
attacked. Initial suspicions of a robbery gone bad… Police eventually came to
suspect the husband who was conveniently out of town yet surrounded by witnesses
the entire time… had her killed for the insurance… could never prove it… You
think Finn was the hitter?”

“Yeah, I do,” Selina said thoughtfully. “It’s certainly
possible, and I’ve got enough guilt on my plate from what happened to Hagen. I
don’t need any more from this. So I’m choosing to believe ‘possible’ is a sure
thing. He did it. He killed that woman and he took the bowl as a souvenir. So
basically we can stop feeling bad for Maerwyn Finn at any time.”

Bruce studied her lovely features, weighing every word.
Then, after a count of seven, his lip twitched.

“Tell me more about this case of yours in Rio?” he
asked, telegraphing the density shift to come with a gravel on the final words.

“Well,” Selina purred. “Dias still despises the idea of a
dojo. Private lessons only, one-on-one, in his home. There's a
houseboy—literally a boy, about fourteen—that works for him. Opens the door,
brings a pitcher of water after class, that kind of thing. He comes down from
one of the favelas, those shanty towns going up the hills…”